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PDF to become an open, ISO standard

linux-watch.com — Adobe says it has released the full PDF 1.7 spec to the Association for Information and Image Management, which will convert it into an ISO standard. Interestingly, Adobe's announcement precedes the public release of both Vista and Office 2007 -- both of which implement XPM, the so-called "PDF killer" -- by one day.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jan 29, 2007

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  • Sithlrd, on 10/12/2007, -4/+75A couple of years ago, PDF support was supposed to be integrated into the OS with Longhorn/Vista (as it is in OSX). Adobe didn't want to let MS do this, and threatened to sue. So MS developed the XPS specification and released it for free. This is the end result - Adobe gives up their rights to the format.

    One of the few masterful moves by MS in recent years.
  • cbergeron, on 10/12/2007, -5/+74PDF is already the de-facto standard, I'm glad to see it join ISO. I'm not sure what XPM is (aside from old X11 Pixmap files), but for it to kill PDF, it will have to become pretty ubiquitous.

    Translation: Not gonna happen.
  • raynevandunem, on 10/12/2007, -2/+43Misspelling by the submitter. It should be XPS ("XML Paper Specification").

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_Paper_Specification
  • haackers, on 10/12/2007, -4/+32PDF is good only if Adobe is not displaying them because Adobe Reader is dog ***** slow on a fast machine. Use Foxit Reader!!!
  • patpi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+22ODF ISO standard + PDF ISO standard = interoperability in computer world much much better.
  • spyres, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Foxit is fast, but does a horrible job rendering complex vectorized jobs. Slow or not, Adobe has the most compatible reader and sometimes people need that fidelity. Foxit won't give it to you.
  • majormunky, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11To Electricsheep:
    "Zippo: "A lot of final art gets outputted and submitted to printers via the PDF format"

    You are thinking about the Post Script (PS) format. almost all printers support it. They were both written by Adobe. PDF came later durring the internet age because unlike PS, You can randomly go to a page in a PDF without having to read everything before that page."

    Actually Zippo is right. The Post Script format *is* used in the print industry, but probably not how you think. I work for a fairly large printer, and the only time we see .ps files is when we are sending pages to our RIP (Raster Image Processor). In house, the art we make, as a final step, gets turned into a PDF, and 90% of what we get from outside the company is in PDF. The other 10% are jpg's and word docs from people who don't understand that we work in a professional enviornment. The reason why we don't use .ps until that final step is because, for one, .ps files are *huge*. There would be no reason for a company to send us a 500mb .ps file when they could send us a 5mb PDF. The reason why PDF's are so nice is, well, from what I see at least, the ability to embed fonts into the document. Before when we mainly dealt in EPS files (encapsulated postscript), there would be times when I would spend 2 hours trying to get a job sent because of font issues. We have now moved to an almost full PDF workflow, and every job we sent gets spit out as a big negative without issues (woot we are going to CTP in about 4 months). This really isn't big news, Adobe already has a few ISO standards when it comes to PDF, the only one i'm aware of, because I've dealt with it a lot in the past, is PDF/X1-a. Adobe just came out with their new 8 suite of products, which im assuming uses PDF ver. 1.7, and thats whats being submitted to the ISO group. Zippo is also right when he says that Adobe has the market from almost all sides. You can buy one product from them, the Adobe Creative Suite, and pretty much have everything you would need to create a newspaper/magazine, etc.
  • offput, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9PDF was already an ISO standard. Though perhaps Adobe have added new features to the file format which are now being updated into the ISO standard. Slightly innacurate title though.
  • Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16Macs have native support (with Preview) for PDFs, and almost all of the graphic design industry uses Mac. A lot of final art gets outputted and submitted to printers via the PDF format... Not to mention that Adobe pretty much owns the industry from all sides.
    That said, PDFs aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
  • mutz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9PDF is a godsend format for printers and prepress offices... especially when it's a certified version, it's technically error-free in other words...
    No RGB images
    No 72 DPI images
    No Dfont's (apple's version of postscript/opentype)
    No tinkering possible in the PDF without being logged in the document itself...

    So basically i output a certified PDF and the prepress rips it to a offset-plate
  • 7of7, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Another company hiding behind "open standards" to destroy competition.
  • Fordi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9@raynevandunem:
    Honestly, I don't know what's so damn nifty about XML. It's rather annoyingly difficult to parse; every parser I've used for it places the XML tree in one ***** up configuration or another; it's space hungry/redundant, and doesn't compress to quite the same smallness as an equivalent representation in binary; there's no way to 'compile' it into a bytecode that is ubuiquitously readable; in AJAXiness, see point one, then try out JSON.

    Everyone's so up on, 'oh it has qualitative data, too'. Yeah? What's so damn hard about including qualitative data in a binary format? The ***** industry got word-buzzed.
  • aspirinetu, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10"Finally, whenever you have to open some PDF from a Google link, can you say "browser crash"?"

    http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
  • Keyframe3D, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I support this, PDF is good enough both for users and developers. It could be more elegant in implementation, but it is widespread. Think of .zip
  • tatroc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6It's about time, I think the only reason they are doing this is to fend off Microsoft. I think it is a smart move on Adobe's part.
  • Sithlrd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Google for Foxit reader.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+16Adobe creates proprietary software, schestowitz. Shouldn't you bash them too?

    Oh, wait. Your hatred is only focused over Microsoft, huh? I see... that makes your commentaries and submissions EXTREMELY unbiased and trustful... ;-)
  • dexim, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6ElectricKetchup: Zippo was talking about sending a project out to a professional printer, not printing something with a home / office printer.
  • nkassi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Considering that more and more printers are able to just interpret PDF documents directly instead of translating to postscript, XPS will have a hard time gaining any traction. Unless, the printers come with dual format support. In the end Microsoft will have to do the conversion themself before sending to a printer so what is the gain ? Less cross-platform support ? Having to convert tons of documents ?

    Maybe Microsoft was pissed because they couldn't add PDF exporting features to prior office version.

    Other than that I welcome the news of PDF becoming a ISO stantdard. This way, adobe can't dictate everyone like they used to. Adobe is hardly much better than Microsoft in monopolizing a market. Just more Linux friendly.



  • moofree, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5That's like saying that the TXT format is bloated because you use MS Word to edit them.
  • rileyjt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4PDF is fine, Acrobat on the other hand leaves something to be desired.
  • supermanred, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Stop spamming digg with your web site!

    Here's what we think of that:

    http://digg.com/design/WORST_Web_Site_Spammed_On_Digg_EVER
  • Saint3k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Thanks guys, totally awesome find! :)
  • satanatnmtedu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The GIMP
  • darkyoshi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I believe the correct spelling is "PWNT"
  • pinesol101, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6try using foxit reader. It loads Fast!!!
  • chapium, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"there's a stronger market trend towards standardizing on open standards ... umbrella."

    wtf?
  • rabidy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
    use foxit reader, uses very little memory and opens amazingly fast.
  • DijitalJB, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4ElectricKetchup: "You are thinking about the Post Script (PS) format. almost all printers support it."

    I don't think he is. I think he means printers in terms of a printing company, i.e. the people who print stuff! It's standard practice to send designs and print media to printing companies in PDF format.

    You are however correct about PostScript also being an Adobe format and being an underlying part of the PS-PDF-Illustrator family of formats.
  • ElectricKetchup, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Zippo: "A lot of final art gets outputted and submitted to printers via the PDF format"

    You are thinking about the Post Script (PS) format. almost all printers support it. They were both written by Adobe. PDF came later durring the internet age because unlike PS, You can randomly go to a page in a PDF without having to read everything before that page.
  • SirBotchness, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Your new name is jimmy gibberish. What, do you just open a PDF and stare for hours at the awesome you have just been given?
  • rileyjt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The only reason why XPS even exists is because Adobe would not allow Microsoft to use the "open" PDF standard in the first place. Hopefully after this truly becomes an open standard we won't have to put up with this competing format non-sense.
  • sandbird, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If you're just reading PDFs as part of your online surfing or the occasional work document that gets passed around as a PDF, then yes, Adobe Reader is clunky.

    But if you work in the graphics industry, then Adobe PDFs are simply a godsend. You have the final file from the client, and you don't have to open a Quark/InDesign file, hope to hell the fonts work, and pray the images are OK. Text isn't going to re-flow because of a font conflict. PDF has taken over the print world; it's not going anywhere.
  • raynevandunem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The reason why I personally dislike Adobe has to do with the general hypocrisy and intolerance of its policies and corporate stances, and its not limited to just PDF and its threat to sue MS over PDF.

    For instance, its joining, last week, with a motley league of anti-Microsoft corporations (mostly based in the United States, including IBM, Sun, Nokia, Red Hat, and Opera) in bitching to the European Commission about how Vista supposedly violates the ruling against Microsoft's monopoly from a few years back.

    Heh, open standards? How about Flash, Adobe? Is that an open standard?

    How about charging royalties (from Next Computer) over Display PostScript?

    How about porting f**king Photoshop to another operating system besides Mac and Windows? Creative Suite? Anything?!

    Face it, Adobe doesn't give two ***** about open standards, and yet you hear them screaming their little head off about Microsoft's monopoly just as MS is about to release XPS and WPF/E.

    Pot, meet a very dirty kettle.

    Oh, and don't forget this little diddy, Adobe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_case_of_Sklyarov%2C_ElcomSoft%2C_Adobe%2C_and_the_DMCA

    Hypocrites.
  • darkyoshi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2but a tad late.
  • OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2[quote]Adobe creates proprietary software, schestowitz. Shouldn't you bash them too?[/quote]

    Adobe doesn't ***** it's customers and the industry over on a regular basis like Microsoft does. Adobe doesn't implement insane license restrictions and authentication schemes like Microsoft does. Unlike MS, Adobe succeeded without being evil.
  • EmailAddress, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2hmmm.... "PWND"


  • TechLaw, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Photoshop next? Please, that ***** is pricy.
  • Doomhammer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I would say that basically your entire comment didn't make any sense at all.

    "multiple security polygon's."
    Security polygons? You're reminding me of that 3D rendered scene in Hackers, where they hacked the proverbial Gibson. :P
  • borchard76, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5PDF has its advantages, and I am glad to see this move.

  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Amazing what a bit of competition will do. Time for some lean mean pdf tools and ditch the Adobe bloat.
  • Saint3k, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5The sooner this happens, the better. I'm tired of using Adobe Reader to read my pdfs. It's too friggin slow!
  • yenster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2One thing I forgot to add from my comment above concerning PDF ISO in the publishing industry:

    What's amusing: if you Google on the phrase "submission guidelines" and surf through online specs for just about every publication on the planet, one phrase gets repeated over and over:
    "Microsoft Word format is not acceptable."
  • XSforMe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"Apple had to reverse-engineer the PDF specification by itself,"

    Wow, that would be dumb considering the PDF specification is open and available to anybody interested.
  • ggriffit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Couldn't agree more! Hopefully M$ will get in gear and support PDF at the base level so the files can be opened with some bolt-on program. Apple has strongly supported PDF with preview since the original OS X in 2001 and enhancing search and speed and such with further releases.

    Microsoft really needs to pay attention to what people are doing and what would help the users. Not tell people what they want and force strange standards on their customers.
  • hobbit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@ raynevandunem

    I don't know where people get this stupid ideas. Apple didn't reverse engineer the PDF spec, do you know how much work that would be!?

    Apple licenced PDF under the Adobe's existing open licencing agreement, see last paragraph of the wiki article you referenced regarding Adobe's free licencing of PDF. This is exactly what the authors GhostScript and OpenOffice have done, not to mention several dozen commercial applications.

    Oh, and your first link goes no where.
  • vammirato, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2XPM will be the new open-source standard for document sharing so long as you are running IE 7 on a new Vista machine....
  • yenster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"PDF is already the de-facto standard..."

    Not only is it a de-facto standard, two flavors of PDF are in fact ISO standards: PDF/X-3 (ISO 15930-3) and PDF/X-1a (ISO 15930-1). Both of these are used extensively in the printing and publishing industries. For example, all Time, Inc. periodicals require that outside artists/agencies submit finished ad art in PDF/X-1a.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hopefully now we will beable to get some decent PDF viewers on windows.

    The Linux ones kick ass compared to the windows ones, especially evince (default gnome pdf viewer), there been some talk of a windows port but nothing solid. So far the only choices are Acrobat Reader, Foxit Reader (seems to be a repackaged Acrobat with less cruft), windows xpdf port (ported the command line only?) and GhostScript Viewer (horrible for actually reading the docs and no advanced features, seems to need 'optional' registration). I can't get either Acrobat or Foxit to print for my parents so they are stuck with the horrible interface of ghostscriptviewer.

    http://www.gnome.org/projects/evince/
  • JohnnySoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, in retrospect, this probably should not be totally unexpected. If I am not mistaken, Adobe put some PostScript formats into the public domain many years ago.

    PDF is the backbone of 2D graphics on the Macintosh. Flipping through PDF documents is so fast on the Mac that the computer does not slow you down at all. I understand the comments that others have left that say PDF viewing is slow - but that is on other operating systems.

    You will not suffer that experience on the Mac, using the bundled "Preview" application. Preview is used for viewing PDF files and graphic image files on the Mac. Preview is _fast_.

    Nevertheless, there have been some complaints over how well the Mac complied to the PDF fie standard in a few areas. With a published, open standard out there, the documentation might improve. Apple's compliance might improve in any areas where the alleged problems exist.

    Also, this PDF development gives Macs another edge in the standards/interoperability arena. After all, they are already using it and supporting it. They have since OSX was introduced, way back in 2001 - a little longer than Windows XP has been out, in fact.

    I remember when MCA was touted as an ISA killer and OS/2 was going to conquer the PC. It has not worked out that way. Backing for PDF is pretty strong. Proprietary competitors to PDF are going to have a pretty tough fight.
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